In Which I Give Up

It just hasn't felt right, drawing and not posting.  There has been a strange motivating factor when I know I am pledged to post, and these past few days without it have been sort of bleh in the drawing department.  So I'm back on the wagon, drawing and posting every day (except during vacations, when I will do catch-up posts).  Okay, so on Sunday I found a velvety deep caput mortuum lenten rose (helleborus) blooming shyly in the back patio garden.  A few minutes later I headed into the woods to see what other caputs were around.  Sure enough, just as Goethe said, this color signals the chopping off of the head of winter as it is the first color to appear in spring.  I found it on the wild roses on the tiniest sprigs of new leaves, just at the base of the leaflet where it quickly turns to green.  Of course the berry canes are full of it, and caput is the color of red maple blooms, one of the earliest trees to bloom here.

Yesterday morning it felt odd to have no real pressure to draw, but my breakfast looked very pretty, so I painted the bowl of yogurt, almonds, and blueberries and blackberries.  Then I got very busy working on some journals for a friend and to take to Barcelona, and I didn't do any drawings until the afternoon.  My friend Michelle had called about something and as an aside she mentioned that she and her husband Hal had been hiking on the Jones Mountain trail, but they had deviated from the actual trail and gone loping through the woods and scrubby underbrush when the trail they were on abruptly ended.  She said they had gone due east for a while and they had come to an old shelter or hut in the woods.  At the hut, she said, they continued east (they had a compass) and came upon the big chimney ruin on one of the trails we always walk on.  The chimney let them know where they actually were, and they easily got out of the woods on the trail after that.

It doesn't take much to get me excited about a grail quest, and finding a hut in the woods is exactly the kind of quest I salivate over.  P, who should know better after all these years, agreed to go with me, using my hastily sketched map that I had made while Michelle was explaining what they had done  (follow the trail till it runs out and then head east).  We did fine for the first hour and a half, even finding some of the elusive trout lilies that grow in secluded damp places in the woods  (2098).  But when the trail deviated from the river and then abruptly ended, we found ourselves hacking our way through brambles and vines and with no compass.  I downloaded a compass app and we soon had at least a compass, but by then we had swung a little off course, enough to push us into what seemed like an endless tromp due east with no hut in sight. 

Suddenly we saw what looked like a structure in the distance through the trees.  It didn't look like a hut though, and the closer we got to it the more it looked like a very large building.  We were thoroughly lost by now, but optimistic that at least we were near a building.  We talked about how much better this was than the time we got lost in the woods in Italy and it was getting dark and we were bleeding from brambles and a bit worried about cingale (wild pigs), and I had to climb a tree to see if I could see any way out, and happily I was able to see a familiar olive tree out in the middle of a field.  So WAY better than that time!  The building turned out to be the very large house of the man whose property abuts the college property.  He came outside to see what we were up to, and he told us to walk down his drive and we would be on a trail we knew well, which we did.  So we agreed to give up on the hut for the day, but when we passed the old chimney, I decided I  (P declined my invitation and went straight home) would have one tiny go at it from the east and simply walk (climb, claw, beat back bushes) due west and I would find the hut.  No such luck, as this map shows.

Today I had no interest in drawing until this afternoon when I set out in the rapidly falling snow for yet another assault on the hut!  This map shows the folly of it all.  I cannot find the thing.  The brambles were so fierce coming from the east and going up hill and to the west that I deviated and headed down a gully that had fewer rose bushes and that by my estimation would take me to one of the familiar trails, and it did.  I know I was close to it!  Michelle said she'll take me there, but I may try yet again going the long way around and being more vigilant about the due east business when the trail runs out!

On the right, three wobbly little pots that sit on a shelf in our kitchen.

And for those of you who might miss seeing Jesse,  here he is dozing in meatloaf position on the rug in my studio.  You can also see the rusty child form dressed in a Maya-modified dress in the background in front of the fireplace.  I'll be back tomorrow, promise.